Distinguished by abundant patient and health provider narratives highlighting the impact of health disparities on health outcomes worldwide, A Population Health Approach to Health Disparities for Nurses is a scholarly yet practical text that prepares RN-BSN, DNP, and PhD students to work toward improving community health for a variety of underserved and vulnerable populations. Grounded in the population health approach addressed in the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Essentials, it delivers practical steps nurses can take to address population health goals, including the improvement of quality of care, access to healthcare, outcomes, and cost management. Written by lawyers, physicians, social workers, statisticians and economists, psychologists, ethicists, finance experts, population health specialists, anthropologists, and nurses, the text emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to learning and all components of healthcare—delivery of care, policy, research, and teaching. It examines demographic differences, chronic and acute health conditions, and the health needs of the unserved/underserved across the life cycle. It highlights the importance of understanding the social determinants of health and discusses ways to address health disparities through changes in public policy, attitudes, beliefs, education, research, and advocacy.

This book highlights the alarming statistics regarding medical errors and the most common causes. A thorough review of the literature identified the most significant errors and their causes. The significance of critical thinking, logic, and clinical judgment has been well established, and the book includes strategies for developing and improving these skills. It addresses case studies, exemplars, tips from the field, discussion questions, and special topics that support the integration and application of the important concepts. The book is structured and organized around two major units. Unit I addresses the severity of the issue and common causes. It provides an overview of the issue and the agencies that focus on patient safety. Despite numerous policy changes and strategies, patient errors have continued to increase after a previous improvement that stemmed from the initiatives after the landmark report To Err Is Human. Common medical errors include medication errors, patient falls, pressure ulcers, infections, and surgical errors. Unit I also describes the primary causes with poor communication being one of the most common causes. Unit II focuses on improving patient safety and decreasing adverse events. It focuses on ways to become a safe practitioner through education and competency development. It also highlights several theories that can be used to promote quality of care and decrease adverse outcomes. It then focuses on the significance of critical thinking in promoting patient outcomes and ways to develop and improve critical thinking and reasoning. The book focuses on prioritization and delegation and ways to develop these skills in addition to the scope of practice, intuition, and ethics. It focuses on leadership and emotional intelligence and finally focuses on the issue from a holistic approach and includes cultural humility and artificial intelligence.

This nursing handbook introduces and defines key terms about race and racism for nurses, nursing students, and nurse educators. It addresses how race and racism act as structural and core social determinants of health and propel health inequities. It moves beyond a focus on multicultural approaches for understanding inequity toward a recognition of the broader impact that both systemic and structural racism have had on inequality in health and life opportunities. Through a social justice lens, the book underscores how nurses, as frontline health professionals, need to understand racism as a factor behind these inequities and its significance to their working environment and nursing practice.

In concise chapters with brief paragraphs and bulleted information, this practical handbook offers strategies for how to productively engage in a dialogue about race and racism. It considers the history of racism in the United States and then breaks down how it operates at structural, institutional, and individual levels. Case studies illustrate such concepts as microaggressions, implicit bias, power, privilege, and intersectionality in order to foster understanding and provide opportunities for both self-reflection and collective conversation.

This book is designed to raise the awareness of fellow nursing colleagues about the opportunities that exist for them in aiding governments and health infrastructures to obtain the targets established by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Additionally, it provides ample opportunities for the profession to integrate global considerations into nursing curricula, research efforts, and practice initiatives right now. The book first provides a background of emerging considerations in global nursing and global health for personal-planetary transformation, a brief history and future directions of the relationship between nursing and the UN, guidelines for global leadership and discussion of the importance of global citizenship, and ethics in the global health context. Then, it provides a primer on the 17 SDGs. Readers will find information about the SDG targets, options for how nursing can play direct and indirect roles in furthering the priorities of each goal, and the current initiatives under way that deserve global nursing’s input and partnership if they are to be truly effective. Finally, the book articulates a vision for the future of global nursing and global health, one that: moves from the firsthand global wisdom of nurses who guide us to further the SDGs in countries around the world; requires us to be reflective as individuals, with partners, groups, organizations, and communities as we commit to sustainable development; creates a collaboration consciousness to engender unity and peace; and illustrates a Post-2030 Agenda, beyond the SDGs, for planetary health.

This book introduces the rich history accompanying the formation of birth centers in the United States and internationally. As you read the stories told by the midwives who founded this movement, sit back, take some time, and imagine the passion and vision of the early proponents of the freestanding birth center model. Most of these women are still alive, a few in their 80s and 90s, but they continue to actively promote and expose newcomers to the model they created with the support of many others. Many important health care issues are addressed in the book. Health system structure and function, innovation, the triple aim, policy, quality, and education all impact the expansion of the community-based birth center model. Birth centers are making a difference locally in the communities in which they are built, as well as nationally as the spotlight shines on models of care demonstrating improved outcomes. In passages that are woven throughout the book, the reader is introduced to “exemplar birth centers”. These centers stand out as shining examples of integration into health systems, different providers working together, enhanced services, the franchise model, and innovative educational opportunities. Finally, the book brings the history and current status of birth center knowledge into the future by introducing readers to the possibility of starting a birth center of their own.

This book delivers a wealth of practical tools for incorporating spirituality into nursing. There are numerous articles on the concepts of spirituality and religion in nursing practice, including the nursing role in spiritual assessment, spiritual nursing diagnoses, spiritual care in various nursing contexts, and many more. Spirituality is a focus for debate and discussion within the nursing profession, and it is appropriate to consider this concept as it has captured the nursing world. The book discusses an interrelationship between resilience and holistic health. It also discusses challenges to incorporating spirituality into nursing practice. Although there is ample rationale for the inclusion of spirituality into nursing practice, education, and research, there are also challenges to such inclusion. Some would identify these challenges as “barriers”, but the word “challenges” seems to have more potential for positive action with respect to exploring each challenge and ways to overcome it. In order to appropriately incorporate spiritual assessment and care into practice, nurses need the requisite professional competency. Competencies are integral to nursing practice and usually accompany standards of practice. Standards for educating nurses about spiritual care are present in both educational and practice contexts in that they are part of the accreditation criteria for institutions. The book also focuses on spiritual assessment and spiritual care within the context of mental health care/mental health nursing and spirituality in palliative and hospice care.

This narrative-based book is the first to describe Human Caring Literacy from the perspective of caring scientists who “live the life” by incorporating the precepts of human caring into every aspect of their personal and professional lives. It describes the methods that help practitioners develop mindfulness, reflection, authentic presence, intentionality, and a caring consciousness in the service of providing authentic, heart-centered care for patients, their families, and societies. Critical Caritas Literacy ultimately is an ontology of being/becoming that comes from within the subjective inner lifeworld of each person, morally aroused for reflective and contemplative self-growth, self-caring experiences that contribute to the whole of humanity. Having a high level of Caritas Literacy allows one to quickly form deep, trusting relationships, often within the first hour of meeting. There is a professional requirement for nurses to achieve competence in the delivery of spiritual care and to assess and meet the spiritual needs of their patients. Culturally competent care can relieve medical and social ills, poor cultural competency reproduces stereotypes and may lead to further microlevel conflict. Structurally, health care settings can facilitate nurse’s dual role as conflict mitigator by caring for nurses, providing burnout prevention, providing self-care rooms and staff support, and offering frequent debriefing with the aid of holistic healers, chaplains, and social workers.

This book imparts to the health care provider the basic tools of Spanish linguistics needed to provide care for the Spanish-speaking patient. The reader is provided with a variety of options to incorporate into his or her language goals. The book includes basic to advanced grammar, basic to advanced history and physical examination scenarios, and hospital-specialty-based patient encounters. An entire chapter is dedicated to enhancing the transcultural awareness of the health care provider caring for patients in the various countries that comprise Latin America. Each chapter includes a range of 8 to 36 audio segments that have been recorded in the Spanish language and in the English language, which enable the student to hear the pronunciation of the words, phrases, and sentences designed to enhance the interactions between the nurse and the Spanish-speaking patient. The book is divided into three sections. Section I presents the basics of Spanish language with chapters covering the alphabets, essential verbs, time and numbers. Basic anatomy, basic medical phrases, expressions to know the patient’s diet, his/her family, and Spanish phrases commonly used in patient care are also provided. The second section on medical Spanish begins with a presentation on patient assessment which is followed by discussions on pregnancy, childbirth and contraception. Transcultural assessment of the Spanish-speaking patient is also described. Section III offers summary review exercises and answers to review activities.

Jean Watson’s “Human Caring Theory” asserts that caring and love transcend distance, space, time, and physicality. This model of caring includes science, humanities, spirituality, and evolving facets of mind-body-spirit medicine. Establishing a firm intent to care in digital settings and then enacting caring in ways that have been validated through research and other forms of knowledge development can help sustain caring as a core value in nursing and beyond. The chapters in Part I offer an overview of Caring Science foundations, Caritas Processes, and examples of real-life applications and implementation strategies. The chapters in Part II provide activities that teachers, learners, and professionals can do to support caring in digital learning environments and during every-day digital communications. Part III explores existing online free and open global educational opportunities related to conveying and sustaining caring in the digital world, and provides simple practices that can support personal and ongoing intent to care. The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and caring online trainings are ongoing teaching-learning-sharing communities and provide forums for far-reaching awareness, dialogue, and cross-cultural/interprofessional collaboration. Part IV consists of teaching materials for a self-contained course on caring that readers may use to create their own course on caring in professional or academic settings. These course materials also provide a concrete example of how to create clear and well-organized content for online courses. A significant amount of knowledge development can occur through group discussion, sharing, and collaboration.

This book provides a framework to assist nurses in achieving this ethical competence. James Rest’s four-component model (FCM) integrates the cognitive and affective processes that form an understanding of ethical nursing practice: sensitivity, judgment, motivation, and action. Beginning with a brief overview of ethical theories and principles and building on the experiences of readers who are practicing nurses, each chapter includes one or more evolving case scenarios. Questions posed with each case scenario encourage ethical sensitivity, awareness of personal values, and use of a decision-making model that integrates elements of virtue and care ethics. Recognizing the challenges that arise when attempting to implement a justifiable decision, strategies to maintain ethical motivation, or moral courage, are also presented. Skills to enhance the nurse’s actions in everyday ethical practice with patients, family members, and peers, such as protecting autonomy, promoting safety, and speaking out against lateral violence, are discussed. The two main forms of clinical ethics in a hospital are: ethics committees and ethics consultation services. As the nurse is obligated to maintain and improve the moral environment, several chapters discuss the competencies needed to recognize and address organizational and societal issues. The three ethical issues arising for clinical nurses in the provision of person-and family-centered care (PFCC) are: ensuring that the patient’s voice has primacy over that of the nurse; honoring the choices of the patient even when they conflict with those of the nurse; and engaging with family as the patient directs.

Based on candid interviews with 35 military nurses who were deployed for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this book reveals the stresses and moral dilemmas they experienced as they transitioned back into everyday life. The book provides the historical background of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan commenced the extensive use of the U.S. Army’s forward surgical teams (FSTs) to support military operations in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The nurses share their difficulties with family separation, clinical reassignments, post-traumatic stress disorder, the perceived stigma of seeking mental health counseling, and compassion fatigue. Nurses commented on petty complaints and trivial whining, and a general sense of inflexibility and occasional rudeness on the part of others. Interviewees describe in vivid detail their homecoming which was a positive experience for some and a disappointing venture for others, family adjustments, renegotiation of spousal and parenting roles, domestic and workplace challenges, and many other dilemmas posed by the reintegration process. They provide insights and thoughtful recommendations for changes to current military debriefing to improve the experiences of future wartime nurses. The book also examines the differences between active duty services and reserve unit services, issues of substance abuse, the Veterans Administration, the burden of multiple deployments, and other common threads among nurses who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This book presents a conceptual framework for contemporary nursing practice based on the science of self-care and also incorporates other nursing and multidisciplinary perspectives. It illustrates how to attain and integrate knowledge from nursing theory and theories of related disciplines to achieve optimal evidence-based nursing practice. Case examples from a variety of clinical situations integrated with nursing theory demonstrate the variables needed to achieve optimal nursing practice. The first chapter discusses, inter alia, the relative value of different ways and patterns of knowing within the discipline of nursing. This is followed by a chapter that explains the importance of knowing and understanding the proper object of nursing. Nursing is an action system; action systems begin with problem identification, framing, and delineation. Several factors condition or influence the requirements for self-care, and represent a point of articulation of nursing sciences with other sciences that inform health-related situations. Self-care agency is developed as one learns from his or her family members and others in society to care for self. A traditional collaborative-care system is a unique whole that is formed through the informal or formal negotiation for care by two adults. The dependent-care agent is a person in a relationship not only with the care recipient but also with other members of the family. The family may be a factor that conditions the therapeutic self-care demand and self-care agency of the family member who is the identified patient.

This book provides a transformative approach to the study of nursing through nursing case studies in caring. It provides an innovative and exciting approach to the study of nursing from within the context of nursing situations. The book is divided into two parts. Part I provides an introduction to the concept of nursing situations; an overview of the philosophical and theoretical perspectives grounding the framework development; an explanation of the Barry, Gordon & King Teaching/Learning Nursing Framework; a conceptual translation and application of the framework to selected grand and midrange theoretical perspectives; and an in-depth exemplar of teaching the discipline of nursing through the use of a nursing situation at the graduate level. Part II presents examples of nursing situations across a variety of populations, health concerns, and practice settings. These include caring between a nurse and an older adult, a nurse and a young woman experiencing a sickle cell crisis, a nurse and a young woman who experienced sudden cardiac arrest, a nurse and an adult, a nurse and a young adult experiencing cancer, a nurse and a baby and its parents, a nurse and a child, a nurse and a group of men hospitalized with chronic mental illness. The settings are also varied such as an emergency room, NICU, long-term care setting or a hospice care. The last chapter talks about caring during the Ebola outbreak in Uganda.

This book is devoted to a discussion of the native American Indian health system and nursing. It is divided into three parts. Part I first provides a national and historical look at the peoples of what is now the United States. This is followed by a view of pre- and postcontact indigenous America and the effects on health resulting from policies by the new dominant culture. Next to be introduced is the idea that “nursing” has been occurring in indigenous America long before icons, such as Florence Nightingale, put a face to the profession. An introduction to nursing and the Indian Health Service (IHS) is then followed by health modalities outside of the IHS that is, indigenous knowledge and traditional healing. Part II shows how these experiences are/were played out in the various cultural regions of the United States: Northeastern Woodlands; Southeastern Woodlands; Southwest tribal regions; Great Basin; Indians-habitated California; Pacific Northwest; Alaska; and Northern Great Plains. Urban has been added to the regional groups found in the 48 contiguous states and Alaska. In Part III, the reader explores funding as a major component of increasing care options and access in Indian country. Two chapters discuss the issues of Indian health funding and American Indian nursing education.

This book describes and analyzes nurses’ roles in select cases from disasters that have occurred in areas around the world from the late 19th century to the present. These include an outbreak of typhoid in Tasmania in 1885 to 1887; a devastating earthquake in Italy in 1908; an Ohio (USA) flood in 1913; the Alaskan influenza epidemic of 1918; the World War II bombings of London and Manchester, England, in 1941; the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in 1941; the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945; a destructive wild fire in Bar Harbor, Maine (USA), in 1947; the SARS crisis in Toronto, Canada, in 2003; and the effects of Hurricane Sandy on hospitals in New York City (USA) in 2012. Nurses’ actions are situated within local responses, national networks, and international aid. Nurses are a critical part of disaster response, and the book gives them a voice. Themes that recur throughout the narrative are: the notion of a nurse’s “duty to care” versus the need to protect herself or himself; the need for innovation and coordination of the response effort; and cooperation among the responders versus inherent political, racial, and interprofessional conflicts. Thus, the book examines political sensitivities, international conflicts, cultural differences, and societies’ varying professional and gendered expectations of nurses. In addition, the book highlights nurses’ voices during major World War II bombings, addressing realities that occurred during the war that have long been silenced for reasons of political and social correctness. These case studies document nurses’ roles in response to the London Blitz, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the bombing of Hiroshima, revealing nurses’ response to these crises: their dedication to patients, their ability to triage and improvise, and their adaptation to nursing professional norms expected in various cultures.

This book provides a comprehensive survey of the range of issues to nurses and those interested in nursing’s contribution to the field of global health. The underlying assertion of the book is that global health encompasses the health problems of both rich and poor countries and implies a shared responsibility for achieving health and eradicating inequities. It takes into account the social, political, cultural, economic, and environmental factors including climate change that may impact health. The book is divided into three units. Unit I offers an overview of the foundations of global health and include the emerging concept of climate justice and its relationship to climate change and environmental health consequences. Additional tenets such as analysis of the distinctions that relate to public health, international health, and global health and the ethical context of global health, human rights, and social justice are explored. Unit II highlights issues of global health and the effects on the most poor and vulnerable worldwide particularly women, children, and those living in areas of conflict. In underdeveloped countries, safe water access is one of the most obvious determinants of the health of individuals and populations. Negative health effects related to violence within the scope of their vulnerability to HIV/AIDS and forced participation in sex trafficking as well as maternal mortality and childhood malnutrition are also examined. While much work toward achieving global health is underway and there have been notable accomplishments, Unit III addresses areas where efforts must be redoubled to achieve success. These areas include challenges of international nurse migration, nursing leadership in inter-professional education, importance of continuing education, and working globally with faith-based organizations.

The book is designed primarily for graduate students in nursing, especially those in advanced practice nursing programs at the master’s and doctoral (DNP) programs who are engaged in clarifying the process of advanced nursing practice, and those in PhD programs who are interested in addressing epistemic questions related to nursing practice as generic subject matter. The conceptualization of client from the nursing perspective is discussed, as the client is the central figure in nursing practice. Detailed descriptions and comprehensive expositions regarding the structures of perspective, knowledge, philosophy, dimension, and process of the model of nursing practice are presented in the book. The book identifies, describes, and examines the essential general tools of practice specific to nursing, which are required for and applied in nursing practice. These are behavioral and cognitive repertoires that are applicable to various sorts of nursing practice situations, and that have nursing-specific utility, meaning, and application. The book addresses the concept of collaborative practice in terms of intra-, inter-, and cross-agency collaboration in the context of person-centered practice. Knowledge application in practice is examined applying a model of knowledge application in nursing practice. The concept of knowledge-based practice is discussed vis-à-vis evidence-based practice, and critical reflective inquiry as a generative mode of development in practice is presented. The book also deals with excellence in practice and the meaning of good practice in relation to the concept of quality of practice.

This book presents firsthand accounts from nurses at all professional levels, who share their life-changing experiences and insights with nurses interested in the global health arena. Their stories emphasize the practical, challenging, and rewarding aspects of global health nursing. The nurses describe their motivation for working in global health, along with the rewards and challenges. They discuss the importance of approaching global nursing with humility, respect, and appreciation for what they will learn from their colleagues. They describe how global health work has enhanced their ability to provide quality care to diverse populations, which include recent immigrants living in the United States. In addition to these vivid accounts, the book discusses the parameters of global health nursing, how to prepare for this nursing experience, key resources, global nursing research, and nurses as global health consultants. Woven throughout the book are descriptions of how these nurses have encouraged―through teaching and mentoring―the next generation of global health nurses. The book also provides coverage of domestic global health initiatives, and assists faculty to prepare themselves and their students for global health endeavors. The book is written for nurses at all stages of professional life.

This book is written to provide a general overview of health literacy, as it is difficult to incorporate a comprehensive illustration of every type of health literacy encounter. It is divided into four parts with specific chapters within each part for quick and easy reference. The first part of the book provides an overall baseline knowledge of health literacy. It touches on health literacy and its impact on accessing care and navigating throughout a complex health care delivery system and reviews the major health literacy efforts of the federal government, scientists, health researchers, health policy experts, and health professionals. The second part focuses on the role of oral communication. It incorporates the role and importance of culture, language, and communication access services needed to provide quality, safe person-centered care and focuses on nursing strategies to enhance effective communication and understanding. The third part focuses on written health communication. It discusses content design and layout of written health information and patient education. How written information is presented can have a tremendous impact on readability and understandability. The final part of the book helps to prepare nurses who care for unique populations. It presents health literacy implications when caring for persons in in palliative care and making difficult end-of-life decisions and identifies the uniqueness of caring for young children, patients with mental health disorders and older adults. Finally, the book presents the ethical principles of human research subjects and how to ensure that research participants with low health literacy are protected.

This book is meant to be a companion book to nursing textbooks that provide philosophical and theoretical elements of rural nursing and rural health care in America from the early 20th Century. It provides supplementary reading through historical case studies, demonstrating how characteristics that define rural nursing today have their roots in history. Chapter 1 recounts the inception and development of the Red Cross Town and Country nursing service, identifies the importance of community participation, and highlights the unique work of the rural public health nurse. The situation in rural Wisconsin between 1915 and 1940 is examined in Chapter 2, which provides historical documentation of the fits and starts of early rural public health systems and how nurses managed to provide access to care within them. The third chapter describes and analyzes the nurse’s role in providing care to rural school children in the Commonwealth of Virginia during the first 30 years of the 20th century, and reveals the importance of ‘place’ in the development of school nursing programs. Establishing trust with the local community was essential to rural nursing, and this is explained in the fourth chapter by describing describes how the nurses accomplished that feat with poor Whites and Blacks in the southern cotton mill villages, using the Schoolfield company town as a case study. Other chapters discuss the health care needs of the West Virginia coal miners, the establishment of Frontier Nursing Service (FNS) in remote mountain regions, and the role of migrant nurses during the Great Depression. The final two chapters of the book discuss nursing in West Texas and for the rural Navajo population.

This book presents a framework for nursing to build and, ultimately, sustain partnerships. Exemplar case studies written by nurses working in global health follow each chapter to illustrate specific elements of a strong partnership. The guiding principle for the book is that partnerships are paramount in creating sustainable outcomes. Varying degrees of partnership integration can include coordination, cooperation, and close collaboration. No matter their degree of partnership, nurses are ethically and morally obliged to be concerned with the world’s suffering. The book begins with a chapter which discusses types of existing partnerships and how nurses make the selection of an appropriate program to begin a partnership. Chapter 2 addresses how cultural perspectives, personal attributes, expectations, and knowledge of host country influence a volunteer nurse’s experience. In the third chapter, nursing roles in host country are addressed, community assessment as essential knowledge is highlighted. The importance of nursing licensure, mutual respect, and partnership is also dealt with. Chapter 4 presents examples of nurses’ experience with volunteers or partners, differences in the scope of practice between nursing partners, and the role of the nurse and nursing profession in host countries. This is followed by chapter which emphasizes the importance of resources, whether human, material, or financial, which are essential in developing a partnership. Two other chapters discuss important aspects of collaborative nursing research in international settings and explore the elements of sustainability to address the leadership required to maintain the partnership.

The purpose of this book is to offer nurses, physicians, and other staff a primer on family-centered care of the newborn. It addresses the theme of family-centered care of the newborn and how to establish partnerships with the family prenatally and postnatally, as well as delineates best practices to improve both the quality of newborn care and family support. The book is based on four guiding principles that include treating people with dignity and respect, providing information in ways that are useful and affirming, welcoming family participation in care and decision-making at a level chosen by the family, and collaborating with families at the bedside and beyond. To participate effectively in shared information and decision-making with parents, people must improve their ability to communicate. Communication skills in these situations are as important as technical skills and clinical competence. The book offers strategies to promote implementation of a family-centered environment in the delivery room or neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), practical approaches to communicating with families before and after delivery, and tips on policy review to facilitate a culture of family-centered care. It also discusses how to welcome families during interdisciplinary rounds and nurse hand-offs, and ways to support families during procedures and resuscitation.

This book offers nursing and related fields a repository and living history of the evolution of nursing within a caring science paradigm over a 40-year span from foundational ideas and developments, to current work in education, research, and institutional/community practices of caring. It is organized into nine sections providing an in-depth analysis of the evolution of caring scholarship; systematic reviews of the concept of caring; theoretical perspectives, including conceptual orientations, middle-range theories, and grand theories; seminal research studies; research designs and methods; practice models for the integration of caring within contemporary hospital-based practice environments; caring in communities and for the environment; leadership and administrative issues with a focus on caring and economics; and the future of caring science. Each section features an introductory essay illuminating important concepts, followed by reflective questions appropriate for baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral levels. Also included are multiple-choice questions, a variety of case studies, a digital teacher and student resource with PowerPoints for key ideas, and more. The meta-story of caring scholarship in this book helps to carry forward the heritage, history, values, goals, theories, ethics, knowledge, and philosophical views of humanity that guide the future professional and profession.

This book reviews the body of knowledge and practice standards that define the specialty of correctional nursing. The text also describes the health care needs of the youth, men, and women who are incarcerated in jails, prisons, and detention centers. The book supports correctional nurses by providing guidance and resources about the best practices to deliver nursing care that reduces suffering and improves the quality of life for incarcerated individuals, their families, and the community at large. The book is divided into four parts. Part I presents an overview of correctional nursing with chapters covering the ethical principles and legal considerations involved, and safety aspects of the nurse and the patient. The nurse-patient relationship is imposed on both the inmate and the nurse by the governmental entity that is responsible for providing the medical service. The second part talks about the health concerns and diseases of the inmates. These include discussions on alcohol and drug withdrawal, chronic diseases such as obesity, hypertension, arthritis, dental conditions, end-of-life care, women’s and juveniles’ health care, infectious diseases, mental health and pain management. Part III deals with the nursing care process with presentations on health screening, sick call and emergency care. The last part of the book discusses the professional roles and responsibilities on the nurses in correction centers. One of the chapters in this section discusses research participation and evidence-based practice.

This book attempts to correct the dearth of nursing-relevant information about religions. The information in the book can help nurses to avoid being negligent to patients whose religiosity overtly and covertly influences their responses to health-related challenges and transitions. The book redresses the damage done by the prevailing discourse in the nursing literature that disparages religion in favor of a generic spirituality. It is divided into two parts. Part I discusses religion and nursing care, and explores the need for nurses to offer religious “interventions” at the bedside, provides information about how to talk with patients about religion and information about how to assess religiosity, addresses how nurses can support overt rituals, and offers legal and ethical perspectives in integrating this information in clinical care. The last chapter in this section reflects on the impact of a nurse’s religiosity on nursing practice. Several federal laws and most states have “conscience clauses”, which allow a nurse to refuse to participate for religious reasons in an abortion, sterilization, and often other procedures. Section II is the focal point of the book since it features contributions from 22 religionists who are not only experts about a faith tradition but also adherents of it. The religious groups covered in this section include Anabaptist-descended groups, Anglicans and Episcopalians, Baptists, Christian scientists, Latter-Day Saints, Lutherans and Methodists, Orthodox Christians, Pentecostals, Roman Catholics, Jehovah’s witnesses, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and atheists.

This book is written for faith community nurses (FCNs) and provides information and resources necessary to be successful in the practice of faith community nursing. This specialty nursing practice combines the caring aspect of nursing with the spiritual and the sacred. The book is divided into three parts. Part I provides an overview of faith community nursing practices its roots, practice models, roles, and legal and ethical parameters. Faith community nursing is the specialized practice of professional nursing that focuses on the intentional care of the spirit as part of the process of promoting holistic health and preventing or minimizing illness in a faith community. Parish nursing is a recognized specialty practice that combines professional nursing and health ministry. Health care practitioners who make several small changes in how patients’ religious commitments are broached in clinical practice may enhance health outcomes. There are four models through which faith community nursing practice is delivered: the institutional model, the congregational paid model, the congregational volunteer model, and the paid consortium model. Part II includes chapters that inform the FCN about initiating a faith community nursing ministry, assessing the health needs of the faith community, health education, teaching, and program planning and evaluation. Part III presents information on meeting the special needs of the faith community and includes content on acute and chronic care needs, palliative care, and grief and loss. Additional chapters focus on connecting with community resources and vulnerable populations.

Nursing disciplinary focus is the relationship of caring within a mutual human-environment health experience for healing and well-being. Complexity sciences and nursing science have the power to promote a deeper understanding of human beings as they evolve with the environment. This book focuses on both caring science and complexity sciences within the realm of nursing science, practice, and health care organizations. Organizational cultures deal with values and beliefs about what they are there for, products they may produce, how they govern and manage, how they use technology, and how they deal with human relationships. There are chapters focused on complexity sciences, highlighting, for example, entropy, methods, organizational paradoxes, and conflict relationships from more theoretical, quantitative, and/or mathematical research approaches. A chapter focused on the disease process of diabetes that shows the complexity of diabetes from the cellular to policy levels. Other chapters are focused on theoretical and qualitative research methods or newer research methods capturing the science of complexity, such as the comparing and contrasting of complexity sciences and the science of unitary human beings (SUHB), complex caring dynamics, and story theory and method. There are chapters related to leadership, caring in complex health care organizations, and nursing education that address both complexity and caring sciences. Finally, the book contains chapters that challenge our ethical thinking with informatics applications in practice, and the future of nursing and caring within the realm of the human-humanoid relationship. Each chapter has response that highlights what the particular chapter means to nursing education, research, leadership, administration, and practice.

Nursing theory and practice intertwine in a mutually supportive bootstrapping process as the nursing graduate develops skill. A theory must be a new whole in which decontextualized elements are related to each other by rules or laws. It seems that it is more plausible to believe that sufficient experience, accompanied by no theoretical knowledge, could produce skilled coping behavior. The study of the skill-acquisition phenomenon has shown that a person usually passes through at least five stages of qualitatively different perceptions of their task as skill improves. Performance improves to a marginally acceptable level only after the novice has considerable experience coping with real situations. While this encourages the advanced beginner to consider more objective facts and use more sophisticated rules, it also teaches the learner an enlarged conception of what is relevant to the skill. A more subtle and refined discrimination ability is what distinguishes the expert from the proficient performer. It is our hope that we have put into words once again what nurses and all clinicians know in their practice and that the marginalized caring practices presented here compel the reader to consider the societal worth and knowledge inherent in the caring, diagnostic, and therapeutic work that nurses do. As well, it is our hope that practitioners from other fields will join us in this conversation so that together we can design better institutions of public caring—in our schools, families, social work, courtrooms, and in all places where protection of vulnerability, sponsorship of growth, and the promotion of better citizenship occurs. The synthesis of the work on the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition is drawn from Benner (2005).